


The Order of Things

by Wonderfulsause51



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Gay, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I am in love with ashton in here though, M/M, Mentions of Cancer, Ongoing story, ashton is so kind, get past the nodding, he's fun, im embarrassed, its my favorite verb, just a BURDEN of sarcasm in the first few chapters, luke is kind of an asshole in the beginning sorry, there will be a happy ending I swear, why are all my characters transparent versions of myself, you'll still like him tho
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:53:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24794197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wonderfulsause51/pseuds/Wonderfulsause51
Summary: Luke has been dying for almost his entire life, but suddenly, things start to improve. He's never had a future before, so Ashton endeavors to teach him how to live.
Relationships: Luke Hemmings/Ashton Irwin
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	1. 1. airpods

**Author's Note:**

> airpods  
> {and the ease with which people can passively avoid the world due to their use.}
> 
> Playlist | Supalonely (BENEE, Gus Dapperton) - All Love (FLETCHER) - Life Itself (Glass Animals) - The Mother We Share (CHVRCHES) - 24/7/365 (Surfaces)
> 
> bit.ly/TOplaylist

➵➵➵➵

Luke was already in his seat in the class Ashton shared with him when Ashton sprinted in just before the bell rang. He had his head bowed with the customary beanie atop it that Ashton could barely recall seeing him without, and he was typing something into his phone. Ashton was glad Luke was in school today. He'd been missing about half of their shared classes lately, and when Luke missed class, Ashton missed Luke.

"Hey, Luke," Ashton greeted him as casually as possible--given his shortness of breath--and slid in next to the seemingly oblivious boy. Luke didn't acknowledge him in the slightest, continuing on with whatever he was typing into his phone. Ashton sighed internally, but this was not unusual.

"How are you today?" He asked, hoping to elicit a more vibrant response.

Still nothing.

Oh, wait--AirPods. Ashton noticed the end of one poking out of where Luke's beanie tucked behind his ear, and gently nudged him with his elbow. Luke jerked a little, his washed-out blue eyes flying open, and he pulled out his right pod.

"What?" Luke inquired somewhat sharply.

Luke had this way of talking that Ashton loved--something about his voice correlated with green in Ashton's head. Luke's 't's were crunching leaves, and his lovely open 'a's were apples, sweet and tart tasting. The whir of his 'w' reminded Ashton of the faint sound of his neighbor's lawn mower floating up to his window in the midst of summer. It was all terribly nostalgic, listening to Luke turn 'what' into poetry.

"I've got the notes. From the last class." Ashton told him politely, smiling a little bit because Luke was looking at him, and Luke's eyes were a feeling he tended to crave.

"Oh," Luke said, frowning a bit. "That's all you wanted to say?"

"I asked you how you were, too," Ashton told him.

"Oh. You know. Cancerous," Luke said, shrugging and turning back to his phone, which was running a low quality first person shooter game that was flaring red with an increasing amount of intensity the longer it was unplayed.

"Yeah..." Ashton said, trailing off awkwardly and letting the silence hang itself to dry for a couple minutes while Luke tapped the screen furiously.

The teacher, Ms. Friedrich, blew into the classroom in a gust of cool air and leather satchel. She was always almost late, since she taught at a local high school that Ashton and Luke both attended. She'd started there the year after they graduated, though.

"Hey, guys. My bad. I cut it super close this time--one of my students...ah, you don't care..." she trailed off as she fiddled with the projector at the front of the class--she did this every time--and then cast hopeful eyes around the classroom. "Um...Casey? Would you...?"

Casey, a girl in the front who knew how to turn on the projector, came to Ms. Friedrich's aid, and soon the class was diligently taking notes about the abstract movement in art and literature. Ashton was noticing how nice it looked when he wrote "Stein" with a swirly decoration on the "s" when Luke abruptly stood up, banging his chair against the desk behind theirs in the process, and walked out of the room.

Ms. Friedrich paused in her lecture, making eye contact with Ashton, and they exchanged a look. She knew about Luke's situation--though it was hard not to at this point--so after a moment she subtly nodded in Luke's direction, and Ashton stood in turn and followed after him out into the hall.

Ashton was Luke's helper in that class, Liberal Movements of the 18th and 19th Century, and in the other class they shared, Math 112. He would take notes on the days Luke had to be gone for chemo or on days that Luke was too sick off of the chemo to come to class. He would also tutor Luke when he had to miss big chunks of time, and sometimes he would help him get around the small campus if he was weak but needed to take a test or something. Ashton occupied this role simply because he had known Ashton before college and had two classes with him. His other helper was a girl named Ann, who they had also gone to high school with. She only helped with one class, though, so Ashton was the most helpful helper. This was something onto which he rather clung, as it was his only concrete connection with Luke, who was otherwise etherial.

Luke was still walking away, and with purpose. Though he was delicate in his frame, he was tall and long legged, and Ashton had to jog to catch up.

"Luke--Luke!" He knew calling out would get him nowhere based on the determination in Luke's stride. He caught him at the end of the outdoor corridor, slowing down to match his pace. "What's going on?"

No response. He looked up at Luke's unreadable face, and saw--

"Take out your AirPods, dude," Ashton said loudly. This seemed to jar Luke. He again removed just the right one.

"What?" He didn't say it like a question.

"Why'd you walk out in the middle of the lecture? Ms. Friedrich was worried," Ashton half-truthed.

No response. God, Luke always did this. Ashton liked him a lot--had for years--but the silent treatment was the one guaranteed way to get under his skin. He took a breath, let it out. Another. He controlled his voice, made it even. Ready to talk again.

"Well?" Shit, that came out a little more upset than he meant it. Oh well.

Luke looked at him diagonally, a way of watching him with as little movement as possible. "Why do you care so fucking much?"

Ashton gritted his teeth. This was another way that Luke needled people around him. He acted as if concern was obsession, like caring for him in the slightest was strange and excessive. It was a defense mechanism, Ash told himself to stop the blow to his...pride? ego? It was like going up steps in your childhood home, but when you get to the top there is one less than you remember. Even though he knew the deflection was coming, it still landed hard and sent searing blasts off in his nerves.

"Why did you run out of the fucking class? You're the one who did the weird thing, not me."

Ashton could swear that Luke imperceptibly winced at that. He was self aware sometimes.

"I don't know who Gertrude Stein is."

Ah. An honest answer. This was rare, but Ashton was glad that for once they didn't have to dance around the issue for an indeterminate amount of time before Luke decided wether or not he was going to talk about it. Sometimes he just wouldn't, and Ashton would never know what was wrong.

"I can teach you that. She was really cool. Picasso painted her," Ashton volunteered.

"I think I'm going to drop out," Luke said instead. "It's too much work. And I'm dying anyway. So why bother?"

Luke always said things like this with absolutely no emotion. Ashton had no idea how he did it, because every time he remembered Luke was terminal he felt as if all the air was being crushed out of his lungs. What do you even say to something like that? Ashton hadn't figured it out yet. He'd tried to reassure, but that just made Luke upset. He'd tried staying silent, but he always ended up breaking his own silence because Luke was much better at not talking. He even tried getting upset with Luke once, telling him it was cruel to others to talk like that, but he'd known that was a bad angle even before he said it and that suspicion was proved correct when Luke gave him a bemused look and didn't talk to him for a week.

"I don't know what to say when you say shit like that," Ashton decided to whole-truth for maybe the first time when confronted with the prickly parts of Luke. "I don't know if you realize it, but I am trying really hard to say the right thing constantly and when you say shit like that, it really fucks me up."

"I am also fucked up about it, believe it or not," Luke said to him.

"I know. I think about that all the time too. Almost as much as I try to think of the right thing to say when you tell me for the fiftieth time that you are going to die."

"Well," Luke slowed to a stroll and then settled on a stand. "I mean, I am. Going to die."

"Me too. Just later. Probably. But who knows?" Ashton shrugged, looked at Luke, did a cramped little smile-move with his mouth.

"Yeah. Okay. Fair point," Luke was staring straight ahead, down the grassy hill between the campus and the creek at its base. The creek was runoff from the dam that housed the water for their agricultural community, and even just ten years into existence, the creek bed was already etched deeply into the landscape.

"I can tutor you extra, if that's what you would like."

Luke groaned as Ashton said it. "Ashton, I literally hate this school so much. I hate these dumb fucking classes. The only one I even remotely like is Liberal Movements and I don't even know who any of the people are that we've been talking about all term."

"It would probably be easier to hear with your AirPods out," Ashton said neutrally after realizing halfway through the thought how beat the dead horse of mentioning AirPods was. He really did hate them, though. He'd so many times thought that Luke had been passively listening to him expound about something important or meaningful when in reality he had them in, invisible under his beanie or his hood.

"Jesus Christ. Did you sell your Apple stock in the '80s or something? What is your deal?"

Ashton felt his face go a bit hot, but he still knew he was correct. Luke was smart, he'd just been disengaged lately, more pronouncedly in the past few weeks.

"I just don't want you to drop out, is all."

"Why? Can't afford to lose the hours?" This was a scathing remark, but not one that Ashton hadn't heard before. Luke liked to remind Ashton when he was really in a mood that Ashton was a paid notetaker in the classes that he shared with Luke so that the community college could show how equitably they served their diverse community. Being a paid notetaker is about as lucrative as it sounds; Ashton made 25 dollars a week off of it. Luke liked to pretend Ashton viewed him as a job, though. Ashton supposed it made him feel less pitied.

"Ha. Sure. What a goldmine, all the free tutoring and 8:30am phone calls to make sure you're on time to class, and missing the lecture I'm being paid to take notes on to run after you and make sure you aren't going to do something weird. I can't believe I have to have another job that actually pays me."

Luke went silent again. Ashton threw a tiny party in his head. Just one bag of confetti, no cake. A small party for beating Luke at his own petty game.

"Going to school makes my mom feel like I'm going to do something after I finish school," Luke said after a second. Fuck, gotta clean up the streamers, party's over. "That's how she felt about high school, too. So focused on me graduating so that I could go to college. And then I did graduate, and it was like, what's next? Is this the last milestone that I get? But then I went to college. And now there's another milestone, another thing that they didn't think I'd get to do that I do get to do and it's like I owe it to my younger, sicker self to try to get to this milestone I don't even know if I want."

Now it was Ashton's turn to be silent and think. It was so rare that Luke opened up to him. It had happened before, since this was his second year as 'helper' and Luke had already had some ups and downs, but still. When Luke decided to say something, he said it exactly the way it should be said.

"That's really shitty," he settled on.

"Was that the right thing to say?" Luke asked.

"Probably not. It usually isn't."

"If you would help me study, that would be...helpful," Luke admitted after another beat of silence. "But I'm not going back to that class. I want to do something else instead."

Ashton wilted inwardly. He did have to go back to that class--as much as he hated to admit it, he did need that money each week from the note-taking for groceries. Working at the pizza place took care of his rent, but tips were slim outside of sports seasons, and they were in between fall and winter.

"Well, have a fun rest of your day. I'll text you pictures of the notes," Ashton told him, turning to go back to the lecture.

"Why are you going back?"

"I need to take the notes, Luke. That's my job that I do so that you know what we learned."

Luke tapped out something critically on his phone, waited a moment, and then nodded a tiny bit in confirmation.

"Casey just said she would do it and text them to me. When do you need to submit them?"

"Ugh--," Ashton stuttered. "--eight tonight?"

"Oh, you'll even have time to copy them into your handwriting, then. Let's go get a burrito."

x

Halfway to the parking lot, Ashton realized all of his things were back in the classroom.

"Luke, I gotta go back. My keys are in there. And my book. And my laptop."

"Why did you leave all your stuff? That was dumb."

"I didn't know you were going to ask me to go on a spontaneous burrito trip with you. I thought you were going to be regular-strange-detached you, not suddenly-interested-in-getting-a-burrito-with-me you."

"My burrito interest isn't sudden. You know I love burritos."

"Not burritos with me. You only like to make me feel guilty about not having a terminal illness. Classically that has been one of the the defining factors of our relationship."

"Huh," Luke paused, looked almost sorry. "I guess that's true. Tell the teacher you have to take me to an emergency therapy session or something. Because of my grief about dying so young."

Ashton rolled his eyes, huffing as he began the walk back to class.

"I can't believe I'm doing this. I actually like Ms. Friedrich and don't want to lie to her," he had a thought and spun on his heel. "Luke, I swear to God, if I get back here and you've ditched me, I will never forgive you, and I won't tutor you any longer.

"I don't have a car right now and I'm incredibly weak and feeble," Luke said, flopping his arms around and dimpling a bit. His dark cloud had passed, and he was happy for the moment. "I could only make it to the highway if I tried."

x

When Ashton got back from the class after a highly embarrassing entry and exit with a muttered explanation that Ashton was pretty sure the teacher knew was a lie, Luke was hiding poorly behind a scruffy shrub near Ashton's beaten Honda SUV, a gift from his mom on his 18th birthday.

"Too tall. I can see you. Which burrito place?"

"Which do you like?"

Ashton shrugged. "I like the food cart on third."

Lukes eyebrows raised a bit. "I haven't eaten from a food cart since I was 10, maybe."

"Because of your mom and her thing?"

"Yeah."

Luke's mom was extremely paranoid about germs when Luke was doing chemo, which had been on and off since about seventh grade. It made sense to Ashton. Chemo made your immune system bad, or whatever.

"There's a nice sit-down place on--,"

"No," Luke interrupted. "Let's go to the food cart."

Ashton shot him a strange look, but Luke was already getting into the passenger seat of his car. Ashton shrugged and got in as well. He started the engine, and Glass Animals spluttered on.

"--she said I look fat, but I look fantastic--," the speaker system screamed at them.

"Ha! Great line," Luke cheered as Ashton hurriedly turned it down. "I was listening to them earlier."

"Good band," Ashton reversed and pulled on to the driveway that led out of the campus.

"Would you hate me if I changed my mind?" Luke asked

"'Bout what?"

"Food cart burritos."

"Germs freaking you out?"

"Yeah."

"What's the plan, then?" Ashton asked, slowing down before the intersection to pull onto the highway that led to their town proper.

"Do you have those microwavable burritos at your apartment still?" Luke had only been to Ashton's place a handful of times out of their numerous tutoring sessions, but one of the times he'd been extremely stoned and and eaten an entire bag of microwavable chimichangas.

"Always. That's a staple," Ashton pulled the wheel to his right, toward his apartment, as butterflies threatened to float his whole body away.


	2. 2. thunderstorms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luke and Ash go on a walk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thunderstorms  
> {they aways feel poetic}
> 
> Playlist | Pilot Jones (Frank Ocean) - Holy (King Princess) - Look What You're Doing to Me (BANKS) - Ultralight Beam (Kanye West) - How to disappear (Lana Del Rey)
> 
> bit.ly/TOplaylist

➵➵➵➵

Studying went poorly. Luke was not in the mood to learn about imaginary numbers, and Ashton was pretty spent after talking him down from dropping out of college, so they ended up on the couch eating burritos and watching some strange new Netflix show that seemed to be animated specifically for people partaking in psychedelics. 

"Have you ever done acid?" Luke asked, blowing on the burrito, which was effectively filled with lava after its three minute stint in the microwave. 

"Yeah, twice. You?"

"Fuck no. My parents barely ever let me out of their sight, and even then, I'd feel so shitty if it messed up one of my treatments."

"It's not as scary as people think," Ashton mused, "At least my experience wasn't. The first time I did a really low dose and just watched the sunset. It was super spiritual. I think that set me up for a better trip the second time because I wasn't scared going in." 

"This show makes me feel like I'm on drugs. What the fuck is it?"

"Ugh--," Ashton dug around the couch cushions to dislodge the remote. "The Midnight Gospel."

"God, I love it. I wish I could do drugs other than weed."

"Someday, man," Ashton told him, before immediately regretting what he'd said because Luke probably wouldn't have a someday. He kept his eyes trained on the TV, but studied Luke's reaction in his peripherals. To his surprise, Luke looked unfazed. 

"Maybe," was all he responded. 

They watched for a while longer, eating burritos and hitting off Ashton's pen. It was times like these that Ashton forgave Luke. These forgiving times were necessary, too, because Luke's accuracy with his words extended past kind or thought-provoking sentiments; he knew Ashton well enough to pinpoint all the most painful spots for him. Ashton would never forget the first and last time Luke had come over to Ashton's childhood home when they were both freshmen in high school. It was only a few years after Ashton's dad had left, and by the end of what was meant to be a catch-up session for Luke in their history class (Ashton had been a self-employed 'helper' for years before being officially designated), Luke had said, "Ashton, you know the only reason you had me over is so you could say you were my friend after I die. Your dad leaving isn't enough for you to put in your Harvard admission essay, right? That's like 50% of the population. A dead friend is probably all the rage in the Ivy League admissions circles."

The taunts about death were nothing new, to say the least. 

However, when Luke was relaxed and in a good mood, he could even border on sweet at times. This was the Luke that Ashton had rose-colored thoughts about during long walks. 

The episode ended and the lower corner of the screen began counting down. 

"Another?" Ashton asked. Luke nodded, but then turned to look outside. 

"Oh, shit! Look at the sky, Ash! There's gonna be a thunder storm."

They both twisted on the couch. The clouds were in turmoil, knotting themselves together and writhing darkly as the wind whistled in the eaves of the apartment. They were on the second story, and Ashton could see that in the distance it had already begun to rain. Soon the storm would be atop them, and his apartment would shake and sway tremulously as the stilts that held up the front half made deals with the devil in order to stay put. 

"Are you still nervous about storms?" Luke asked, and Ashton blanched. He though Luke might have forgotten--all those years ago, when Luke had said he just wanted to be his friend so he would know a dead boy, there had been a storm. It was why Luke had said the cruel thing; Ashton had gotten scared and grabbed Luke's arm for support, and Luke had shattered into anger. Later, Ashton found out that some of the medication Luke was on made his skin hyper-sensitive, but at the time he'd had no idea that his hand would leave blooming purple bruises on Luke's bicep, and that Luke's mom would angrily call Ashton's mom and tell her that Luke could have died of a blood clot as a result. 

"Nope. I think I was only scared because--," Ashton cut himself off. Because my dad had just left. Despite Luke's current mood, he still didn't want to give him ammunition for later. 

Unfortunately, Luke finished the thought for him. "Because your dad walked out right around then, right? That's super shitty."

Ashton shrugged. "Yeah, I guess. It's been a long time. I'm glad he left now." 

Luke continued to stare out the window. "I was also kind of scared of storms. But I always felt really dumb about it, because there I was dying of the number four killer of teenagers in the world, yet I was scared to death of a storm that has less than a 1% chance of ever hurting me."

"You were scared?" Ashton asked incredulously. "Then why were you such a dick to me about it?" 

It slipped from between his lips before he had a chance to stop it. 

Luke turned to look at him. His eyes were blue-lilac in the gray light of the outside, and for a moment Ashton truly could not breath because he was so beautiful. The refracted natural light turned him monochrome, and he was composed only of indigos and periwinkles and peony petals. Ashton wished he could paint, because if he could capture this moment of Luke, he was sure it would be enough to sustain him for an eternity. 

"Was I?" Luke asked, oblivious to the memory. His voice was rose quartz, and Ashton was afraid saying the wrong thing would turn it back to iron. 

"It was a long time ago," Ashton acknowledged, though the words still sometimes stabbed him in the chest late at night. 

"Do you want to go on a walk, then?" Luke asked, standing abruptly. "I like to walk in the rain."

The weather had been overcast for most of the week, and Ashton hadn't been keeping up his walking habit. He looked out into the storm, which was stagnating over the cemetery he liked to spend time in. Now that he wasn't scared of storms, he was kind of electrified about them, even enjoyed them. They made him feel overwhelmed in an awe-inspiring way.

"Sure. Where to?"

Ashton told him about the cemetery, and Luke laughed. 

"Why do you wanna take a dying person to a cemetery, freak?"

"You can pick out a plot or whatever," Ashton grabbed his phone, pen, keys, and wallet. "I like going to cemeteries. It's like a library but you're allowed to cry and no one asks you why. Do you want to borrow a jacket?"

"That's such an emo fucking reason to like cemeteries. I hate it," Luke was already inspecting the hoodie selection on Ashton's hook near the door. "Can I take this maroon one?"

"Yep."

Luke tugged it on over his beanie, which dislodged and fell to the floor. To Ashton's surprise, a shock of wispy blonde hair was beneath it. He stared.

"Hair?" Ashton questioned. "Between treatments?"

Luke mussed his hair, seeming embarrassed. He tucked the beanie into the front pocket of the sweater. "Yeah, sort of. We're trying this kind of experimental treatment. It doesn't make me as sick and I get to keep my hair." 

Ashton nodded, "Nice."

They headed out. Ashton's apartment was near the area in which he had grown up. His mom, sister, and brother all still lived in the same house as always, and they passed it on the way to the cemetery. 

"Hey, you lived there," Luke noted. 

"Yeah. My family still does."

"Do you think..." Luke trailed off, looking wantonly at the front porch, which was always neat and clean. 

"Hmm?"

"Do you think your mom has peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? I really want one right now."

Ashton laughed out loud. "Luke, you're high."

"You let me smoke! I'm not used to this delivery method! The medical stuff is edibles, and mostly CBD. I'm not used to being a real weed boy."

"Am I a real weed boy, then?" Ashton asked, and Luke looked at him, pouting with drama. 

"I can't be held accountable for my actions if I don't have a pb&j in the next 5 minutes."

Ashton laughed again and course-corrected in the direction of his mom's house. He knocked on the door, then crouched down to yell through a slightly open window. 

"Harry! You home?"

There was some scuffling in the house, and a moment later a middle-schooled aged boy with a curly, sandy mop of hair and a soccer ball tucked under one arm opened the door. He had a pop-tart dangling out of his mouth, and was tracking crumbs everywhere. 

"Ha brovther," Harry said around the pastry, eying Luke like a wild animal might. 

"Harry, this is Luke," Ashton inclined his head and edged his way around Harry. The kitchen was in the front of the house, so he went to the counter and grabbed bread from the drawer under the kitchen counter. 

"'Sup, Luke." Harry greeted, immediately losing interest in the situation and leaving the door ajar for Luke to enter. He flopped down on the couch in the living room, across from the kitchen, where he had Rick and Morty playing on the TV.

"I met you before. I was here for your birthday, once," Luke said, and he didn't exactly smile but he kind of raised up the edges of his eyes. It was enough to make Ashton have to bite back a thankful grin, because he'd been halfway-worried that Luke wouldn't be nice.

"Oh," said Harry thoughtfully. "I just had one of those. I'm thirteen now."

"Sick," said Luke. He sat on one of the barstools at the counter

"Super sick," Ashton mocked as he tried to gently peanut-butter the soft white bread without crushing it. 

"Mom's at work. We have some of your mail," Harry told Ashton. 

"Lauren here?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "She's with her boyyyyyyfriend."

"Gross. How old is she again?" Ashton exchanged a look with Luke, who seemed to find this interaction somewhat humorous. 

"Like 15 or something. That dude sucks. He always calls her 'babe' in front of Mom, which is disgusting," Harry finally finished the pop-tart and tossed a small stack of mail in Ashton's general direction. It didn't make it to the counter, and the letters fluttered all across the floor. 

"Too young for that shit, man," Ashton agreed, and Luke scoffed. 

"Weren't you dating our freshman year? Like three different people!" Luke shook his head. "Your brother was a whore, Harry."

"I didn't date dudes who called me 'babe' in front of Mom," Ashton muttered, looking at Luke darkly before handing him a sandwich, which he had cut into triangles. Luke seemed pleased by this, taking a bite from a corner. 

"Yeah, my bad. You just dated dudes who were 3 years older than you and sold drugs on campus," Luke smirked. 

Harry gasped. "Antonio was a drug dealer!? That makes so much more sense now. I could never figure out why you liked him. He always smelled like fry oil."

"Luke, I will literally fucking kill you if you say another word," Ashton glared, but inwardly he was glad that Luke even remembered the high-school version of himself. They were not very close at all before college, especially after the thunderstorm incident--which also happened to be the day of Harry's 7th birthday--and Ashton secretly thought that if Luke remembered the people he'd dated, he may have cared about him a tiny bit. "And Antonio wasn't the drug dealer. That was Jackson."

Luke and Harry shared a conspiratorial glance. 

"Exactly how many drug dealers have you dated, brother of mine?" Harry inquired innocently. Ashton rolled his eyes with such intensity they felt strained when they returned to their normal placement. 

"A few. Enough. Whatever. You both suck."

Harry laughed, turned the volume on the TV down. "Wanna play wet frisbee? It's way harder than normal frisbee because of the wet."

"I don't know if I can, man." Luke said, forcing casual into his voice like he was injecting a drug. Ashton winced as he struggled to reinstate the lid of the jam jar.

"Oh. Still sick?" Harry asked. The town was small, and basically everyone knew about Luke. He'd been in the newspaper before, several times; sometimes it would be a hopeful story about recovery, and other times it would be a serious piece about the need for more research on the rare, aggressive bone cancer that had presented after Luke's initial diagnosis. 

"Yeah. Also, I'm not very good," Luke answered after a moment's hesitation. Ashton looked down so the bruising sadness in his eyes wasn't visible.

"Oh," Harry nodded again, understanding, but not really. "Ash?"

"We're walking to the cemetery right now. Just stopped for a snack," Ashton said, smiling as best he could at his brother who was blinking at him inquiringly. "I'll come over this weekend and we can play."

"But what if it doesn't rain?"

"This is Oregon, kid. I'm sure it will rain at some point, and as soon as it starts, I'll rush over."

Harry shrugged, flipped the TV off, and headed in the direction of his bedroom. Luke gathered his legs up beneath him and stood as Ashton tucked the bread back in its place. 

"Sorry about that. I haven't come around in a while. He gets lonely with the girls. Also, fuck you for telling him I dated a drug dealer. I don't want him to think that's okay."

"I don't think anybody thought it was okay that you were dating Jackson. He had 5 o'clock shadow and you had voice cracks," Luke seemed to re-inflate after the wet frisbee letdown. 

"Whatever, man. It was a strategic choice. I saved a lot of money doing that instead of buying from him. "

"Literally whoring yourself out for drugs," Luke tsked. "Wow..."

"It wasn't..." Ashton trailed off. "Okay, it was like that, but I was like 15, so it doesn't count. I'm much more sensible now."

"Ah, yes. Now you are so sensible you take your terminal friend on a nice walk to a graveyard. Extremely sensible."

Ashton rolled his eyes again--were his sockets getting tired?--and they dove out onto the street, where now rain was driving down with such intensity it was like someone gave up on using drops and and was instead pouring buckets of water down on the earth

"Still good to go?" Ash questioned as the wind whipped away his breath. He wrapped his arms around his torso, already soaked to the bone. 

"Sure," Luke had to half-yell because the storm had grown quite loud. Lightning flashed, blinding them for a moment, and thunder cracked while their eyes were still projecting phantom fireworks behind their pupils.

"That's striking close," Ashton strained. 

"What?!" Luke was bowed against the direction of the storm like he had to tunnel through the air.

"I said it was close!" Ashton yelled back. 

"Hell yes!" 

Now Ashton could see that Luke was grinning manically, his face uplifted so that each raindrop cracked across his cheeks like a whip. Ashton shook his head, laughing but wary.

The cemetery was close, only about a 5 minute walk. It was positioned on a hill, as most cemeteries seem to be, and had a steep set of stairs that led up to a big stone angel with three benches in a semi-circle around her partially nude form.

"Are you good to walk up the stairs?" Ashton asked as they reached the base of the hill. He felt out of breath because of the intensity of the wind, and he knew that Luke was more easily winded than most.

"I'm not weak, Ashton," Luke said in a way that wanted to be acid but instead just sounded desperate. "I'm not."

"I know," Ashton said too softly for Luke to hear.

They climbed the steps to the angel. She was usually light grey, but the rain had soaked her so that she was almost black, the the raindrops brought her stone shroud alive so that it looked like it was swaying along with the wind. Ashton stared up at her a she gazed placidly over the field of dead bodies. He wondered if she was meant to be a guardian for the dead or for the mourning. 

x

Luke began to shiver quite violently once they reached the top of the cemetery hill, where the land was most exposed to the elements. It was much colder up there than at the base of the hill, so they began to descend the steps, inspecting the graves and listening to the thunder. 

"Mary-Ann McCahill, born June 2nd, 1822, died May 5th, 1823," Luke read out, and then laughed derisively. "I bet her mom was mad that she didn't make the milestone."

"I doubt it," Ashton said, trying to remind Luke that not everyone was as callus as him. "She was probably just sad."

"Yeah, but I bet when she told people about it, she said 'Mary-Ann didn't even live until her 1st birthday', you know? Which I guess is a pity tactic. But still."

"I don't think people talked about death the way we do now, like it's so rare and precious," Ashton mused. "In the 1800s I think it was pretty standard to lose your kid young. Because they thought medicine was, like, leeches and cocaine."

"Ha! True. Fuck, I wish I'd gotten sick then. I'd probably be dead, but I bet it would have been a lot more interesting death. And I bet they would have let me do opium or some crazy shit," Luke was staring up into the rain again, like he was looking for something. 

"If you'd been alive in the 1800s, there is no 'probably' about you being dead," Ashton tried to look up too, but the rain irritated his contacts and he couldn't focus his eyes long enough to see. "What are you looking for?"

"I'm trying to see if I can tell where the lightning is going to come from next."

"Why?"

Luke shrugged. "Just to know how it looks. So that I can have a backup plan."

This stopped Ashton in his tracks. "What?"

Luke looked over his shoulder, and for a moment he was transparent and Ashton could see through his gossamer facade, and it was orange and red and black in there, like a volcano about to spill over, but the lava was desperation. 

"I'm not going to die from cancer, Ashton. I decided a long time ago. But I can't kill myself because the whole point is to make it all a little lighter for everyone. So I thought it might be kind of nice to be struck by lightning if it looks like things are really going south," Luke said this confidently, like he didn't care what Ashton would think, but Ashton could tell this was the absolute core of him. This was his deepest want and fear twined together into a slipknot.

Ashton didn't say anything for a while, and they just walked. The wind was dying down, the storm abating. He could hear Luke's labored breathing in his ears, a sound he tried to memorize in case it ceased being an occurrence. That is, in case Luke stopped breathing. 

"Well," he broke the silence. "Not everyone dies when they get struck. Some people are fine, and some people just get really fucked up."

"I could do it," Luke reassured him. "I would be one of the dyers for sure."


	3. 3. texting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ashton texts another boy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> texting  
> {never quite as effective as the real thing, am i right?}
> 
> Playlist | Me and Your Mama (Childish Gambino) - Susie Save Your Love (Mitski, Allie X) - Read My Mind (Catfish and the Bottlemen) - Thrills (Donna Missal) - Who (Lauv, BTS)
> 
> bit.ly/TOplaylist

➵➵➵➵

When they got back to Ashton's apartment, they were both waterlogged and frigidly cold. Ashton kicked his shoes off at the door, as they were effectively wet sponges that would only serve to expel water onto the carpet. Luke stood in the small tile threshold looking lost and narrow. 

"Wanna borrow clothes?" Luke asked, grabbing a towel out of the cabinet next to the bathroom and rubbing it through his hair. Luke considered for a moment, but shook his head. 

"I gotta head home. My mom texted earlier. I have an appointment tomorrow," Luke pulled the beanie out of the front pocket of the borrowed sweater and tugged it up over his head. His shirt rode up his back a bit; Ashton could see that his spine protruded like he'd swallowed a knife backward and it became his backbone. Maybe that was why he could be so sharp.

"Alright. Let me change and I'll give you a ride."

Ashton put on sweatpants and a dry hoodie and slid his feet into a pair of ancient Toms he only used as quick outing shoes, like when he had to check the mail or drive someone a short distance. He shuffled out of his room and grabbed his keys from the the cup next to the door. 

"I hate those shoes," Luke said as he followed him out the door.

"Same," Ashton responded. He jogged down the steps, jumped into his car, and turned on the heat full blast before Luke got in so that he would hopefully warm up on the way hope. 

Luke's mom held great disdain toward Ashton, originating even before the arm grabbing incident. When they were in the 6th grade--Luke's first year going to school with Ashton--Ashton hadn't done the homeroom worksheet, and had ended up erasing Luke's name off of his completed one and replaced it with his own. Since their teacher wasn't stupid, he'd been caught immediately, but initially the principal thought that Luke did Ashton's work for him, so he was written up as well. Luke's mom had never moved past it. She brought it up almost every time he tutored Luke at his house, making dry comments about Luke getting to copy Ashton's work now. 

Luke got in, huddling himself together. He was oddly less colorful than he'd been when they were walking, and he seemed to have retreated back into himself, gazing absently out the window as Ashton pulled out of his parking spot. They drove in silence for a while, faint radio music singing at them from the breathy car speakers. 

"...I'm in love when we are smokin' that, la la..."

Ashton subtly tracked Luke's energy in the corner of his eye. He was leaning his head against the window, his exhales creating little evanescent egg shapes of vapor on the inside of the glass. Ashton again tried to memorize this. He sometimes felt like he had to remember to remember Luke, because he wouldn't always have enough of Luke to afford to forget him. 

"...can't stand it, backhanded..."

"What are you thinking about?" Ashton really couldn't be quiet. He had been trying to get better at waiting Luke out, but it was such a conscious effort that if he lapsed in attention for even a moment, he would slip into conversation. 

"Nothing," Luke said this with a lot of air in it. It floated lightly to Ashton's ears, caressing his cheek before dissipating. Luke's voice could really do that, was really magic like that. Ashton let himself feel for a moment, was afraid he might snap in two, and then straightened himself back out and refocused, letting passion fade into the background. 

"...sleeping with the moon and the stars..."

"Sure," Ashton prompted without prompting, the way Luke liked. Luke never wanted to do something if he thought you wanted him to. Or at least, if you said that you wanted him to. 

"I..." Luke paused, breathed again. "I'm just a little nervous about my appointment. Have been for a while."

"That's why you've been off?" Ashton thought this was rather innocuous to say, given the day they'd had, but Luke huffed sharply and faced more away from him than before. 

"What? I'm sorry, I didn't wanna to be mean. I could just tell you were bothered. You act different," Ashton tried to recover, but it seemed like he'd lost Luke that fast. He didn't respond for probably five minutes as they continued to drive the winding road to Luke's parent's house, which was along the river that sliced their town in two. The song changed, and then changed again.

"You can just always tell. You just notice everything," Luke finally said. Ashton would have thrown another brain-party for finally not being the first one to talk, but there wasn't time because Luke was being vulnerable. He put away the balloons, but held on to chocolate fountain in case he had another victory before Luke departed the car. "I just feel so observed by you."

Ashton wasn't quite sure what to say. "Is that bad?"

"I'm just not close to a lot of people, I guess. Maybe this is how all friends treat each other," Luke mused, seeming to relax a bit now that he was getting this off of his chest. Ashton laughed at himself on the inside, the clown meme flashing like a nightmare in the dark part of his brain. This was also the part of his brain that caused him to throw up the peace sign in photos non-ironically and watch YouTube drama videos until two in the morning. 

"You are an interesting person, Luke. Lots of people notice shit about you."

Luke shrugged. "You're the only one I notice, noticing."

That was something, Ashton supposed. He smiled a bit and turned down Luke's street. They pulled up in front of his house.

"Should I walk you to the door or something? Will that make your mom forgive me?" Ashton asked as he set the parking break and leaned back, looking across the center console at Luke. Luke laughed, seemed to almost blush, and unbuckled his seatbelt. 

"I don't think that will be necessary. She's just awkward. I don't even think she actually dislikes you, she just doesn't know how to be," Luke checked his pockets, making sure he had his phone and wallet. "Thanks for the ride. And the walk and stuff."

"Anytime," Ashton responded. Luke got out and looked back in at Ashton. 

"I'll text you those notes in a bit, okay?"

"Sure," he said, and then, "See you in class."

Luke closed the door and turned to walk up his path, and Ashton flipped around in the road and drove home. 

x

When Ashton got back to his apartment, his room mate had returned. Calum was from the city to the north of the college town in which Ashton had been raised, and he was going to school at the major university that their town housed. Ashton was planning to transfer there after finishing up his core classes. He would be dually enrolled the coming term. 

"Those fucking shoes," Calum didn't even look away from the video game he was playing, "need to come off immediately."

"Everybody hating on the shoes today, man."

Luke kicked them off into the bin beside the couch and flopped down next to Calum. 

"How was class?"

"Fine," Calum told him. "There was some racist preacher outside the library. He told this gay kid they were going to burn in hell. Just your average day in the quad."

"Fun," Luke nodded. This was a regular occurrence on the larger campus, and one of the reasons he was happy to have started at a community college. It was more of a controlled atmosphere. 

"Also, I think Ilaina is sleeping with our Physics TA. She matched with him like two days ago and she's being all squirrelly now. And she doesn't want to go out this Friday, and Mikey is throwing a house party, so that's suspicious. But don't tell her I said anything to you if she brings it up."

Calum talked more than Ashton, which Ashton liked, because he hated silence but didn't always want to be the one filling it. 

"Fucking sketchy, dude. Is that, like, ethical?"

"Hell no, I'm sure. Not to even mention the fact that she's twenty and this guy is at least 27, which, I mean, it's not illegal or anything but I just feel like I've grown up so much from 20 to 22, so I can't even imagine how much different they are in terms of maturity. I don't know. Maybe I'm over-analyzing. I just think it's fuckin' weird."

"It is," Ashton agreed, pulling himself up from the couch and moving toward his room. 

"Hey--," Calum called, "I started a load of your laundry. Why were your clothes all wet?"

"Went on a walk with Luke."

"Luke, Luke? Cancer boy, high school crush, tutoring kid Luke?" Calum was not Luke's biggest fan. He always seemed to be around when Luke was in his most sour moods, and thusly only saw him when he was being unpleasant to Ashton and everyone else around him. 

"Yeah. We accidentally got stoned instead of studying, and then we walked to the cemetery on third. Stopped at my mom's house and had peanut butter sandwiches."

"Sounds like an almost date," Calum commented. 

"Ha. I wish," Luke shook his head. "He was freaked out because he has an appointment tomorrow."

"You gotta branch out a little, dude. Tinder is great. Or whatever app you use."

"You mean, like Grindr?"

"Um--," Calum's concentration was almost broken. "I guess."

"Too many dicks on there for man, man. Literally and figuratively."

Calum laughed, and Ashton ducked into his bedroom, shutting the door and falling backward onto his bed like it was waiting for him all day with open arms. He took a deep breath, held it in, and thought of Luke in his car making breath marks on the window, Luke on his couch touching his lips to the pen tip where Ashton's lips had been just moments before, Luke standing in the courtyard of the school with the sun shining around him like a full-body halo. He let the breath out, and all the memories settled in the back of his mind, getting labeled to go into storage. 

When his brain was sufficiently empty, he flipped his phone over, holding it unnecessarily close to his face until the FaceID recognized him, and opened up to the last app he'd had been using--a Safari search of the etymology of the word 'pizza'. Fitting. He swiped that closed and opened Tinder, which he already had, despite Calum's earlier recommendation. He looked through his profile first, which he'd linked to his Spotify account. He always hoped people went through his playlists before deciding which way to swipe, as he'd curated them with care. 

After he decided that his profile was still an accurate reflection of how he wanted people to see him, he began to scroll, swiping left or right without much though until he reached a picture that he recognized. He looked closer and realized it was of a boy he knew, James. He'd taken the the picture himself the summer before last, when they'd been seeing (sleeping with) each other. James had never formally said they were finished with one another, but when he hadn't returned texts in about a week, Ashton looked on his Instagram profile and saw that he'd started dating a girl he worked with. He decided to swipe right, just to see what would happen, and when they matched, he messaged him.

Ashton: hey. back in this hellscape?  
5:46pm

James messaged back a minute later.

James: Haha, yeah. Recently returned.  
5:47pm

Ashton: is that a good or a bad thing?  
5:47pm

James: Good. She cheated on me. Blamed it on my being bi. Super awesome fun times.   
5:47pm

Ashton: i'm sorry. girls are always weirder about it than guys. idk  
5:48pm

James: Bc straight guys want their gfs to cheat on them with chicks  
5:49pm

Ashton: lol, 2 tru. i meant more like in my experience tho. girls ive dated are always more weirded out that i sleep with dudes than dudes are that i sleep with girls.  
5:49pm

James: Heteronormativity dawg  
5:49pm

James: What have you been up to?  
5:49pm

Ashton: school, work, trying to do fun shit when I can. hbu  
5:50pm

James: Pretty much same. Trying to find a new job rn bc she still works at the dining center.  
5:51pm

Ashton: are you trying to keep working for the university or are you looking to diversify your resume?  
5:51pm

James: lol, idk if I can put food service jobs on my resume for a job in nuclear engineering.  
5:52pm

Ashton: flex. whatever.   
5:52pm

James: I would never flex lol...but I mean I basically hold the future of sustainable energy in my brain  
5:53pm

Ashton: meanwhile i plan to get a degree in the language i have spoken my whole life  
5:53pm

James: Thats a xelf  
5:53pm

Ashton: bad joke but i laughed  
5:54pm

Ashton: what are you doing rn  
5:54pm

James: Sitting at my desk messaging you   
5:54pm

James: Wbu  
5:55pm

Ashton: same but laying in my bed  
5:55pm

James: Sounds nice  
5:56pm

Ashton: it is, thank you  
5:56pm

Ashton: any plans later  
5:56pm

James: Not really, just gotta do some homework but that'll only take me like an hour  
5:57pm

Ashton: same, I just gotta summarize some notes and then i'm done  
5:57pm

James: Wanna come over when ur done  
5:58pm

James: My room mates are gone rn and I've got weed  
5:58pm

Ashton considered for a moment, and just then his phone buzzed with a text from Luke. His heart immediately picked up rhythm, but when he opened the message, it was just forwarded pictures of the handwritten notes Casey had taken in Liberal Movements. He tapped out a "thanks" to Luke before returning to his exchange with James, who was igniting a milder but still pleasant sensation to that which Luke conjured in the base of Ashton's stomach. 

Ashton: sure. i've got some stuff i can bring if you want   
5:59pm

James: Hell yeah. Should be fun. I moved since you last came over  
6:00pm

James sent his new address and said that he would text when he was done with his homework, and Ashton began transcribing the notes Luke had sent along. One time he could swear he saw the text bubble pop up on Luke's side of the text screen, but by the time he finished the sentence he'd been writing and glanced up, it was gone.


	4. 4. red-tailed hawks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luke tells Ashton the good news.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> red-tailed hawks  
> {can you fucking believe birds exist? that's so crazy man.}
> 
> Playlist | SUGAR (BROCKHAMPTON)- i wanna be your girlfriend (girl in red) - Let's Fall in Love for the Night (FINNEAS) - Generation Why (Conan Gray)
> 
> bit.ly/TOplaylist

➵➵➵➵

Ashton left James' place the early the next morning, his brain feeling bruised in the way that ones brain does when one has poor quality sleep. James was still passed out on the bed as Ashton gathered his things, quietly getting dressed in the bathroom and pulling his hood up over his wild hair. He felt grimey, the sweat from last night still present atop his skin. Looking at his pale, tired face in the mirror, which was spattered with toothpaste, was like looking at a skull compared to the ruddy, bright-eyed boy that had stared back at him in it last night. He smelled the different smell of James' apartment and felt violently that he had to leave as soon as possible. In the living room, he'd left his phone, keys, and wallet on the coffee table, and he slipped them into his hoodie pocket as he softly closed the front door behind him. 

Ashton kept the radio soft on the drive home, listening to himself breath and remembering that he was a real person that existed on the Earth. He had to do this nearly every time he had casual sex like that; be reminded that he wasn't just a figment of someone else's imagination. It was almost a pleasant sort of come-down, though; he might enjoy the drive home more than the sex. 

Calum was asleep on the couch when he got home, so he tried to be quiet as he started a pot of coffee. Unfortunately, the old machine was not as considerate as Ashton, and Calum was awoken almost immediately. 

"What--hi. Home Ashton," he was still half asleep, but he struggled up to a sitting position, rubbing his eyes hard.

"Home Ashton," Ashton repeated, and then, "How'd you sleep?"

"Shitty. 'lizbeth didn't end up coming over. My neck hurts from sleeping here."

"I also slept shitty. I'll make extra coffee."

Calum moseyed into the kitchen, watched Ashton begin to prepare some toast for himself. "Me too?" he asked, and Ashton put another piece of bread in the toaster. 

"You smell," Calum informed him. 

"I bet," Ashton acknowledged, quickly lifting his shirt to sniff his armpit. It was rank, as expected. 

"Gross,"Calum said, coming up behind Ashton as he unhooked a pan to fry eggs. He tucked his chin on top of Ashton's shoulder, looking down his arm to see what he was doing. Calum was cuddly with people he was close to, which Ashton liked because being touched in any capacity was another thing that reminded him he was a real person. 

"I was surprised you were down for a hookup after spending all day with your boy," Calum said after Ashton had cracked the eggs into the pan. This was primarily what Calum referred to Luke as: Ashton's boy. 

"Sex is not a thing that spending time with Luke offers me. Different needs have to be filled sometimes," Ashton told him, feeling self conscious but trying to mask it.

"You wish he would offer you sex," Calum wiggled his eyebrows.

"Yeah, but he doesn't and that's fine," Ashton shrugged. He'd long ago given up hope that Luke might want to be more than friends, so he'd simply stopped entertaining the thought. He let himself feel what Luke made him feel, but didn't let his mind conjure up impossible fantasies involving him anymore. Now, he kept the faces blurred in his fantasies. To protect their privacy.

Calum was definitely Ashton's best friend at this point. He knew all the embarrassing stuff about him, and either didn't care or was entertained by it, which Ashton was fine with. Calum was an amusing person to be friends with, since he was so extroverted. He and his posse of friends were always getting up to antics, and Ashton liked to hear the stories and occasionally participate in them himself. 

They ate their breakfast together, and Ashton remembered that Luke had his appointment today. He decided to text him so that he would know what to expect when he got to the midday lecture they shared. 

Ashton: when is ur appt  
8:38am

A few minutes passed before Luke answered.

Luke: 930  
8:41am

Ashton: coming to class?  
8:41am

Luke: idk  
8:42am

Ashton closed out his texts, put his plate in the sink, and went to take a shower. He was sticky with the old sweat of the day before and that strange moistness that accumulates on the skin only when you are unwashed. 

In the shower, he played music loudly to cover up the one-sided conversations he was having. He did this a lot--imagined himself talking to Luke, answering questions about his poetry or something of the like. He did it in the shower so that the rushing water and the iPhone speakers would cover the sound of his voice, because he liked to hear how things sounded when he said them aloud. Today, he was imagining a poem he could write about last night; something about streetlights and stoplights on the drive to James, the universe trying to tell him something. 

"I like that line, 'streetlights smile, cheer me on, but the stoplights try to warn in neon,'" Luke would say.

"Thanks. I had a hard time coming up with a rhyme for 'neon' later but it was worth it," Ashton would answer critically.

"Did that really happen? You went over to someones house and pretended they were the person you loved?" Luke would say, totally unaware that it was him.

"Kind of. But the person I love has never been mine," he would answer, referencing a later line in the stanza that read 'climbed his ribcage, traced his spine/ made him you when you were mine.' They'd make dangerous eye contact across the imaginary table at which they were seated, and

...at that point, Ashton had to let the fantasy dissipate, because it got too impossible after that, and he was in the business of trying to be in less pain. 

x

Luke didn't come to the lecture, so Ashton diligently took the notes, which were math-related and not as open to ornamentation as the Liberal Movements names and concepts. The lecture ended early, so Ashton was already gathering his things to leave at 12:43 when Luke walked in looking slightly wild-eyed. The only other people left in the room were talking to the teacher about the new concepts. 

Luke made a beeline fore Ashton.

"Hey," he said. 

"Hey," Ashton didn't stutter, which was impressive because usually, to act normal and relaxed about Luke, he needed to prepare himself a lot. "How was the doctor?"

"Weird. Good. I don't know. Did you take notes for me?" Luke was peering at Ashton's handwriting on the graph paper.

"That is my burden," Ashton said. "Want me to text them to you now?"

"We never really did 'tutoring' yesterday, and I don't know what is going on in here at all," Luke looked different than usual; he didn't have on a beanie, which was almost comically strange due to its almost 10-year stint atop his head. His hair was thin and stuck out of at odd angles, like it was mostly cowlicks. Ashton found this terribly cute and it was hard to stay impassive. "So would it be okay if we studied right now?"

Ashton said sure, but he had to work later so they would have to finish up before his 4:30 shift, and they left the class. 

"What's with the sudden interest in schooling?" Ashton asked as they squinted in the bright sunshine outside. Second summer was in full swing today--like that second breakfast thing in Lord of the Rings, except global warming.

"I just wanna get back on track. I'm close to not passing both classes with you. You're a bad tutor," Luke told him, but it was light so Ashton knew he wasn't being serious.

"Get a new one," Ashton said. They were halfway to his car, and Ashton could see something on top of it that hadn't been there when he'd parked. "What the fuck is that?"

He jogged forward until his bad eyes could make it out; a red-tailed hawk was perched on the car's rack. 

"Holy shit--Luke, look at that fuckin' hawk!" Ashton stopped in the middle of the road, which was empty at the moment, not wanting to go any closer and scare it away. Luke walked up beside him, his gaze fixed on the bird. It stared at Ashton unblinkingly for several moments, and Ashton suddenly felt existential, as in: he felt his existence and place in the universe in a starker way than he maybe ever had.

"Do ever feel super real? Like you remember you have a body?" Ashton asked without thinking about stopping his words. Luke looked at him sideways, a bit nonplussed. 

"All I've thought about for the last ten years is my body," he answered, and Ashton felt dumb. 

"Sorry, yeah. That makes sense," he stuttered out. Think about who you are talking to. "Birds of prey are just so cool and wild. Like what are you doing on my car rack? You're too majestic, you rule the skies and I am just earthbound scum. You know?"

"You're really excited about this, huh?" Luke asked with a smile that Ashton could hear without even looking at him. The hawk gave them a last look and swooped off the car to a small hill several yards away. 

"It's just cool, okay? Jeez," Ashton hid his face as they walked the rest of the way to the car, feeling hot and exposed.

"I just am not used to seeing you all excited, I dunno," Luke shrugged. "You're always so even-keeled and I'm the one who's freaking out about something." 

Ashton could have flown if the breeze was stiff enough. Luke thought he was even-keeled? All of his hard work was paying off, the shower talking and preparing and planning and careful guarding of his expression, it worked. Hiding this particular ecstasy proved to be too difficult, though, and he bowed over the steering wheel to stifle his laughter as they got into the car.

"Wha--what?" Luke was smiling but his eyes were confused.

"I just--," Ashton tried to control himself. "I just try really hard to seem like that and I'm glad it's working because I am usually falling apart in some capacity."

"Really?" Luke seemed surprised. Ashton blushed, shook his head, put the car in gear.

"I mean, yeah. But like, in a cool way."

They drove for a bit, sweet music floating through the air.

"...I wanna kiss you until I lose my breath, I don't wanna be your friend..."

That's a bit too on the nose, Ashton thought, tempted to switch to the next song.

"What are the things you fall apart about?" Luke broke the silence (for the second time in the last 24 hours), and then quickly amended, "in a cool way?"

Ashton was caught off-guard by the question. 

"I don't know. Stuff."

(You)

"Like your dad?"

"Uh--," Ashton paused, evaluated what might come next from Luke's mouth if he said No, I don't really give a fuck about my dad anymore. "Yeah, sometimes."

Luke nodded and looked out the window for a while longer, almost all the way to Ashton's apartment. 

"I'm sorry about that, by the way."

"My dad? It's not your fault he sucks."

"No," Luke's voice dropped a bit. "I meant about the time I was at your house and you grabbed me. And I got mad and said...you know."

Ashton blanched.

"Jesus, that one took a while," he meant to say it sarcastically, but Luke looked deadly serious. 

"I know."

"It's fine. I've recovered."

"I'm also sorry for other stuff," Luke continued. They were in Ashton's driveway now. He slowed the car to a stop, but didn't move to turn it off yet. 

"Um--thank you, but you don't have to apologize."

"I know. I want to."

"Why?" Ashton asked, because Luke had always been absolutely unapologetic even when it was clear he'd been in the wrong (which was usually). 

"I...guess I've been really angry for a lot of years. And I take it out on people. Which is the wrong thing to do," Luke told him. Ashton almost laughed at the strangeness of this. One of the defining characteristics of his relationship to Luke was the underlying volatility of it, how it could so quickly be cut off if Luke decided he was done.

"I mean, I agree. I didn't know you had a therapist appointment this morning, though."

"I didn't. I had a scan, actually. To see how my new treatment is working."

Ashton's heart plummeted to the ground and then drove through the concrete and the topsoil and kept tunneling though the earth until it reached the molten core, whereupon it was incinerated. 

"Fuck, Luke, I--"

"Oh, no, it's not that--" Luke must have noticed how absolutely and nakedly stricken Ashton was, because he put his hand on his arm to reassure him (okay, his heart wasn't incinerated completely). "It's...like, good, actually. Like...the treatments are working. Well."

"What?" 

Ashton was in a sensory deprivation chamber that only let him hear Luke's voice. 

"Yeah, I guess they're projecting I could be finished with them after my next round. And then I might go into...you know. Remission. Whatever."

Ashton could have screamed. Or cried, maybe? Something dramatic. Instead, he sat deadly still, trying to absorb the news. 

"Have you...is this, like...a pretty sure thing?" He was doing a terrible job keeping his voice even. Yikes. 

"This--yeah, I mean, I've gotten a little better before, but this is like a lot better. Like statistically-improbable-better. Like my mom wants to start going to church again better."

Ashton finally broke, smiling bigger than he could remember doing before. 

"That's so good. Wow."

Without allowing himself to reconsider, he leaned across the center console and hugged Luke all sideways and awkward. Their faces were pressed together for a moment, and the bare amount of stubble Luke had scratched across Ashtons jawline, which somehow felt like if joy was a physical sensation. 

"I--," Luke raised his arms and hugged back lightly. "Yeah, I guess it is."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys are enjoying this! Please leave kudos and comments if you are :)


	5. 5. crying

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They lean on each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> crying  
> {such a relief.}
> 
> Playlist | Rainbow (Kacey Musgraves)- Too Sad To Cry (Sasha Sloan) - warm glow (Hippo Campus)
> 
> bit.ly/TOplaylist

➵➵➵➵

"I'm sorry, I just feel like we should be celebrating or something," Ashton finally spilled out after a long 30 minutes of trying to pretend like he cared about teaching Luke advanced Algebra.

"Nothing's for sure yet," Luke responded, eyes fixed on the paper. "I mean, I've had scans read incorrectly before."

Ashton sucked in his breath. Last year, Luke had been told by a doctor that he had about eight weeks to live. Luckily, his mother had thought to seek a second opinion, but for a week Luke believed he was laying in his half-made deathbed. He'd been really different ever since that happened. It seemed like he was battening down his hatches and preparing for the storm. Unfortunately, preparing meant closing up. He smiled a lot less for a long time, and the sunshine was only just starting to peek out of the cracks again.

"But your mom seemed pretty sure. Has she gotten a second opinion yet?" Ashton asked, inspecting Luke, who was carefully unreadable.

"Today was the second opinion," Luke answered, "and it was actually more positive than the first one."

Ashton felt like a tornado swept by and sucked out all of his impassivity.

"Luke, what the fuck? That's amazing! I wanna--I dunno, I wanna do something--," Ashton was stuttering, beaming, unable to process much but joy when suddenly Luke's face crumpled and he bowed forward toward the table, his chest heaving.

"I--oh, shit. Um--," Ashton was not quite sure what to do. Were these maybe happy tears? Was he supposed to pat him, hug him? Also, why did he cry so fucking weird? Luke was bent over the table, arms at his sides, his face pressed against the hard wood facing away from Ashton. Ashton was a head-in-hands type of crier, so threw him off a bit.

"Luke, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you upset," Ashton managed to string together after gathering himself. He reached out a hand and gently patted Luke's hair.

"The f-fuck are you doing?" Luke's voice was muffled. "I h-hate that."

Ashton ripped his hand away. "Well, sorry--I'm not sure what to do. You're crying."

"I kno-ow," Luke hiccuped a bit. His breathing was already calming. "So stupid."

"No, it's okay. This is, like, fucking heavy," Ashton acknowledged. "Are you--okay?"

Luke paused and breathed deeply for a bit, and finally lifted his hands to his faced to angrily scrub at it before sitting up.

"Yep. Sorry. Okay."

Luke's face was only a bit swollen, and he actually looked bright-eyed and more awake than before. Of course he was a pretty crier.

"You seem...like maybe that is not true. Considering this is like the second time I've ever seen you cry. And the first time was, like, middle school."

Luke smiled a little at that. "Oh yeah, when that kid who thought she was magic bit me."

Ashton laughed. "Holy shit--Amber! The witch! She would sit under the slide and try to summon the devil!"

The memory of the strange little girl making a pentagram out of gravel beneath the metal slide hit them both at the same time, and Luke grinned broadly, looking a bit sheepish.

"You've definitely seen me cry more than that," he countered. "Like all I do is cry. I try not to in front of people, but I'm sure--"

"No, Luke, I swear, I think about it, like, 'It's sort of crazy that Luke is going through all this shit and I've never seen him cry except for when the witch bit him'," Ashton was still giggling. "I notice you, remember?"

Luke looked away at that. "Well, okay, I...I guess maybe I try not to cry in front of you. I don't, like, want you to feel bad for me."

"Oh, I would never feel bad for you. You get on my nerves too much," Ashton finally made eye contact with Luke and smiled so that he would know he was being playful. "I also cry all the time. One crier to another, you're doing it all wrong."

Luke blanch. "Me? Bad at crying? Childhood cancer victim? Impossible."

"No, you are! You stayed all...like this," Ashton demonstrated, pitching forward, arms at sides, "But you need to do it like this," and he sat up, pulled his legs to his chest and buried his head in his hands.

"Oh, is that proper form?" Luke pulled his legs up, too, and rested his chin on top of his knees. "Like this?"

"That's much better. And you need spend much more time actually crying. There's no point unless you get in a good, solid cry," Ashton advised matter-of-factly. "And since you have a pretty post-crying face, people won't be disgusted with you like they are with me."

"Nobody has a pretty post-crying face," Luke rolled his eyes, and Ashton weighed the pros and cons of bearing down on this 'pretty' admission before throwing the list out the window.

"You do. Maybe it's because you have so much practice, though. Can't just be genetics," Ashton wasn't sure if this was funny enough to let him get away with calling Luke 'pretty', but Luke seemed amused by it.

"I guess that's one good thing I have going for me. Two things going for me now. Not dying of cancer is also a good thing."

"Yeah, it is," Ashton was snapped out of the rosy-haze that was getting to flirt with Luke. "Why did you start to cry?"

Luke sighed, looked down, and seemed to consider for a moment before answering. "I'm...just...kind of freaking out? About...the future?"

"Why?" Ashton asked, before--idiot--realizing that--

"I've just never really...had one before." Luke said as Ashton thought it. "Like, I got my first diagnosis when I was 11 years old, and have been in and out of hospitals ever since."

Ashton was sobered. He wanted to touch Luke just to give him comfort. It was the only language he was really good at, but he also thought it was possible to hold someone's pieces together physically, at least for a time.

"That makes sense," Ashton told him after a pause.

"You think?" Luke looked up at him. "I thought it sounded pretty shitty."

"Why?"

"Because...like...I was happier when there were only a few years. Now that there are more, I don't really...know what to do. I honestly can't believe I made it to twenty."

Ashton turned this over in his mind for a moment. "Well, I mean, you don't need to make a plan or anything. Like, now you just get to...you know. Live. Be happy. Do whatever. Or the same shit as always. But now you won't need me to tutor you."

Luke frowned. "I will definitely still need you to tutor me. Now it actually matters if I pass."

"Is this honestly what you want to be doing right now, though?" Ashton asked, "Because we could be smoking weed and getting Taco Bell delivered. I feel like we should celebrate this a little, you know. Even if you're having an existential crisis."

"I am definitely having an existential crisis," Luke mused. "You make a good point, though; I could be having it high."

"Not to brag, but I have a lot of existential crises," Ashton informed him as they moved to the couch, homework abandoned. "If you need any tips, I'm prepared to help."

"My 'helper'," Luke said mockingly, putting air-quotes around the term the college used to describe Ashton's role. It was a bit patronizing.

Ashton smiled, looked at Luke. "Whatever, you're my friend."

"Oh yeah?" Luke hit off the pen, blew it out his nose and began to sneeze profusely. Ashton couldn't help but double over in laughter.

"Hey!" Luke yelped, bumping Ashton with his shoulder so he tipped left. "You have to be nice to me right now. I'm still sick and all fucked up in my head and stuff."

Ashton tried to stop himself from falling from the couch, and reached for Luke's outer leg. Instead of the world exploding like Ashton expected, Luke grabbed his elbow, steadying him so that their shoulders were pressed together. They weren't facing each other, and all that Luke did after was pass Ashton the pen, but Ashton was so hyper-conscious of where their shoulders touched he could hardly catch his breath.

"I'm glad to know you," Luke murmured after a bit. "You're really my only friend."

"I don't think that's true. What about Ann? Casey?"

"I guess Casey maybe a little bit," Luke agreed. "But I've known you the longest. And its, like...different with you."

"Yeah?"

"I can talk about stuff better with you," Luke answered.

"I'm glad," Ashton said. He was feeling nervous. This seemed like it might end somewhere important. "I feel like I can talk to you about stuff too."

(It was kind of true.)

"Really?" Luke asked, and Ashton could feel something like dread rising in him, because what if Luke had figured him out?

"Yeah, mostly." Ashton tried for honesty, hoping a half truth would get him out of the full one.

"Good." Luke answered.

Their shoulders were still pressed together, and as Luke leaned to get the pen from where it was set on the coffee table, their hips slipped against one another momentarily.

"Should we watch something? I'll DoorDash some food," Ashton offered, keeping his voice level.

"Sure," Luke shrugged, leaned back. Ashton did the quickest physics of his life to figure out that if he sat against the back of the couch, with the current cushion slant and wind speed, he and Ashton would be leaning against one another unless one of them made a drastic shift.

He grabbed the remote, flipped the TV to DC Universe, and started halfway through Season 1 of Harley Quinn. His mind was still churning. He decided to get out his phone so he could mimic casualness as he flopped back against the couch. That way, it would be totally accidental that he was falling into Luke's side. In his head, it was perfect, because he would be so distracted with what was on his phone, he wouldn't even notice for a moment that he and Luke were touching, and by the time he did, it would be fine and they'd be past the awkwardness of it, and...

Okay, Ashton talked himself out of it and got too scared to lean back, so he decided to change the show immediately.

"Wait--what?"Luke jerked up, trying to snatch the remote out of Ashton's hand. "I wanna keep watching that!"

Ashton held the remote away from Luke. "Have you seen it from the beginning?"

"No, but I--,"

"Then you have to wait and we have to watch something else."

"Fine," Luke grumbled. "But at least let me choose."

Ashton relinquished the remote and finally leaned back, since now Luke was leaning forward it would be his decision to lean back against Ashton. Luke clicked a Netflix show, and the logo boomed onto the screen. Luke stayed sitting forward though, and after a moment Ashton saw his hand twitch toward his phone, before all of a sudden, Luke reached for the remote again, and--

Wait, is he doing the exact same shit I just was?

Ashton decided today might be as good a day as any to throw himself off a cliff, so he reached forward and lightly pulled Luke's shoulder back toward him.

"Let's just watch," he said, without making eye contact.

Luke leaned back. The left side fo his body pressed against Ashton, and after a moment of tenseness, they both relaxed into each other and the couch.

Ashton felt happy to be a real person and not a figment of anybody's imagination. He could feel Luke breathing next to him.

xx

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leave Kudos if you feel I am deserving! :) Thank you for reading.

**Author's Note:**

> This work is originally published on Wattpad. Listen to the playlist (bit.ly/TOplaylist)


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